I just wanted to pass along my experience this past weekend with VEEAM B&R v9.
I haven't had the need to perform a full restore on any server until Sunday night.
We have an Exchange server that needed service pack 3 installed. Usually I would have done the testing for this with a Virtual lab but I was having trouble getting the lab to configure the correct IP for my domain controller (I will be starting a ticket for this today!) So, feeling a little cocky and decided to go for it. Therein lies my mistake.
The issue arose during during the install of the service pack after the Exchange files had been removed and it quit with an error before the new files were copied. My Exchange server was dead in the water because it could not write to the OWA folder due to an access denied permissions quirk that could not be remedied. Now I was in limbo trying to fight my way through. I quickly realized that this was not a trivial matter when Exchange told me that I would have to perform a disaster recovery method.
Luckily I had performed a VEEAM backup just prior to the install. My nerves were racked as this was THE test of VEEAM in my production environment. I began the restore and once completed all I had to do was bring my network up manually in Vsphere. You would not believe my relief when everything came back to life.
Needless to say this saved me big time. It saved at least a day of Microsoft support and more importantly the grief and anxiety of not having to go the "long way round".
Thanks again!
Martin